


Remember me (because i don't want to forget)

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Jacob adopts the Barebones, Jacob remembers, This is not necessarily the happy fix-it fact you thought it would be, and that's happy, but at the same time, memory things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2018-09-06 20:36:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8768362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: There’s a problem with the swooping evil venom, in that it removes bad memories. Jacob’s memories of magic weren’t exactly what you would call bad, but they weren’t the only memories he had.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AliceFalls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceFalls/gifts).



> Inspired by a comment by AliceFalls on my other fic, Everybody Loves Newt Scamander.
> 
> If you too are in love with the Kowalski family then you can find my Kowalski family history [over here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8648809/chapters/20098117)

Huddled under the cover of a subway entrance stand a woman that got him arrested, a woman that broke him out, and a man that called Jacob his friend. The rain beats against the pavement, the steady drum of seconds slipping through his fingers and trickling away down the gutter.

I don’t want to lose this, he thinks.

In the mornings, Jacob runs his fingers over the photograph of his grandma. In the evenings, he tells her how his day went and straightens her picture on the wall. Babcia, he calls her, because he has never set foot on Polish soil in his life but his heritage was important to her and so it is important to him. Jacob is a man who remembers her teachings and holds them close, who pours his love for her and hers for him into pastries and cakes and kind words and friendly smiles.

Jacob is a man who remembers those he loves, not in that distant, nostalgic way that some people are remembered, nor in that sudden, painful way that other people _make_ themselves be remembered. Jacob remembers with fondness and hope, a gentle sort of grieving that aches to the corners of his soul and becomes as much a part of him as anything else.

Jacob is a man who stands with friends and is being asked to forget them, and he thinks, I don’t want to lose this.

The rain, when he walks numbly into it, runs thieving fingers over his skin that leave cold agony in their wake.

I don’t want to lose this.

There is a press of lips against his lips. A lingering silence that screams denial against his ears. The wash of raindrops against his eyelids.

He wakes, and they are gone.

-

Jacob feels… off. He can’t say why. He looks at the overalls in his cupboard and he knows they’re his, but they don’t seem like clothes he ought to wear. He pulls them on anyway and tries not to wrinkle his nose at the poor fit.

Maybe it’s because the clothes are so distracting, but he walks the long way to work. It’s only when he’s halfway through that he realises and he has to hurry to avoid being late, cursing himself for his stupidity the whole way. The back alley cutting shaved a good seven minutes off his commute and it can only have been distraction that made him cross the street to avoid it and continue round the block instead.

At work, the routine calms him. It’s boring, mind-numbingly dull, but it’s not bad per se. It’s just… not what he’d wanted to do when he was younger.

He’d wanted to be a soldier. To save the world, to be part of something grand. He remembers it with aching clarity, the play acting when he was younger and the dreams of standing up to evil and facing it down with a gun in his hand and triumph in his grasp.

There’s something wrong with the memory, something sour and bitter that hangs just out of reach. Soldiers don’t save the world, he thinks, and he knows it with a conviction that aches, old wounds and bitter heartbreak - soldiers fight and die and gas warps their corpses into something foul and what could ever be heroic in this -

He blinks, arrested by the force of his grief. He has no reason to carry such pain. He was lucky as a soldier, and gas is something he knows only from stories, second or third hand at best.

Still, though. He thinks that there is as much grandness to be found in making people smile as in war, even if the thought lacks the strength of conviction he feels it should have.

When he leaves the canning factory that evening he makes a deliberate effort to walk back through the cutting. It’s dark, the shadows carrying a depth to them that send his feet moving faster and his eyes dart between the gaps between them in trepidation.

He doesn’t know why he’s afraid.

There’s a speakeasy on the corner, a dingy, run-down building with peeling paint and a flickering light above the door. Jacob frowns at it, because the last time he came through the cutting the building had been sitting empty. It isn’t empty now. The murmur of voices carry to the street, catcalls and whistles interspersing the chinking of glasses and the tinny recorded music. It feels like an old place, one with a reputation and a steady stream of illicit regulars, but the last time Jacob had walked through this cutting the building had been empty. He’s sure of it.

The door opens and a woman exits, the sheer material of her dress doing very little to cover the lack of clothes she wore underneath. A second woman joins her, thigh high black stockings ending a good few inches before her skin tight dress began. Jacob’s face burns and he resumes walking, keeping his head down and his gaze fixed firmly on the street.

One of the women laughs. “Don’t be like that, honey!” she calls, and Jacob wishes he could pretend that she wasn’t talking to him but they are the only three out in the cuttin. “Come back inside. Nancy never meant to scare you away!”

He keeps walking. He doesn’t know who Nancy is (Nancy’s a bombshell in a black corset, ostrich feathers forming a skirt that’s almost completely open at the front. Her hair is dark and her lips are red and Jacob is just drunk enough to reason that he’s already broken the law with the whiskey so why not, why not see what the fuss is all about) and he hopes they’ve mixed him up with someone else. They must have mixed him up.

He leaves the alley with their coarse laughter echoing down it, and he resolves to leave time for the long way round in the morning.

-

He can’t find his favourite mug. There’s a letter in the mail about an overdue bill, and when he goes through his accounts he discovers that he’s been avoiding it for three months now. Three months! If he had enough to spare he’d pay it, but he doesn’t. So he can’t. When he shaves, he accidentally cuts the side of his neck because there’s a raised scar, a tiny cluster of tooth marks that wasn’t there before.

He’s not a man to jump to conclusions, but something isn’t right.

When Newt barrels into him, he’s too startled to respond straight away - and what was it with the guy and walking into people? He shouts Newt’s name, but the man is already gone.

The rush of sadness and longing leave him breathless, an empty tightness in his chest that he can’t explain. Newt is a friend. They share cocoa and feed mooncalves, they run after erumpets and catch thieving nifflers - Newt was there when Jacob’s occamy hatched. Newt is a friend and Jacob saw him just the other day, will see him in the next few days, won’t he? Why wouldn’t he?

The case is full of occamy shells. The note says they’re for a bakery that Jacob didn’t think he was going to own anymore and it’s signed from a stranger.

He doesn’t go to work.

He goes home and huddles in the corner, watching the suitcase like a hawk in case a graphorn leaps out of it. Besides, Newt will want his egg shells back, won’t he? He didn’t think - he didn’t _really_ think that Jacob would spend them on his bakery? Jacob wasn’t going to have a bakery. The details on why were fuzzy, but the bakery dream had been replaced by a new one. He was going to travel the world and make sure Newt remembered to eat and he was going to live in a suitcase that housed a miracle and he was going to marry a girl who could read his mind and _why did Newt call himself a stranger?_

He struggles to recall if he and Newt had had an argument, but there’s nothing. He starts at the beginning and maps through it step by step, from the time in the bank when - when - from the day in the bank to cocoa and strudel, and he can’t remember what happened in between.

He can’t remember what happened in between.

They rescued Newt’s niffler and they put the erumpet back where she belonged, and Jacob can’t remember what happened after that.

They ran through the underground caverns of MACUSA and there was giggle water and an invisible demiguise, a giant feathered occamy that they caught with a bug in a teapot, conversations on the roof by his grandfather’s pigeon shed and Queenie said he was one of them and he can’t remember what happened after that.

There are holes in his memory. Newt thinks he’s a stranger. He’s skived off work, and he doesn’t know if he’s done that before or not but he’s probably not going to be able to go back.

He hides the trunk full of occamy shells (occamy shells! Tina would have a fit if he used that as collateral in a no-maj bank) in the back of his cupboard and pulls a suit on in place of his workers overalls. The route to his babcia’s house is not a short one, but the walk helps clear his mind, and by the time he arrives he has reasoned it through.

The note is a code. There’s another animal on the loose - there must be, and with MACUSA still breathing down all of their backs, Newt can’t afford to be open in his association with Jacob. Perhaps the occamy shells are a disguise for something else hidden in that case, perhaps they’re some part of a convoluted plot to attract the errant creature to somewhere safe and out of the way. Jacob probably shouldn’t have left the case, but he’s come all this way now so he’ll have a slice of szarlotka and a cup of tea to be friendly and he’s sure Newt will cope without him until he gets back.

The woman who answers the door is not his babcia.

He stammers through an apology, horrified at his rudeness for interrupting her afternoon with another guest, but the woman tells him that his babcia doesn’t live there anymore. She hesitates, one hand curling and uncurling in a nervous gesture, and when she’s says the words she winces at their bluntness.

Aneta Kowalski is dead.

She fumbles her way through sympathies and offers him a cup of tea, but Jacob doesn’t hear. He stumbles back. He sees, now, that the flowers are different in the windows, and the curtains on the other side are cream instead of soft pastel blue. The front door has been painted, smart black over the scuffed wood that Jacob remembers. The laburnum tree by the gate is gone.

Aneta Kowalski is dead.

He doesn’t remember excusing himself, and it’s entirely possible that he just walked off without even a thank you. He doesn’t care. He wants, suddenly, desperately to go to his cousins, to find his aunts and his uncles and count the rest of his family to make sure they’re all there. He wants to go down into the suitcase and count the occamies, because he was there when the little occamy hatched and they’re important and it matters, at that point in that time, that all of them are safe. He wants to find Tina and Queenie and make sure they’re where they should be but he doesn’t know where that is because aren’t they on the run?

He doesn’t know. He _doesn’t know._ He can’t remember. He thought they were, but his babcia is dead.

Newt thinks he’s a stranger.

Tina gave the suitcase to Queenie and Queenie tried to give the suitcase to him and there’s a pit yawning beneath his feet that says what if Newt doesn’t come back and what if Newt is really gone and the memory ends and Jacob _doesn’t know_ what happened next.

He stares at the suitcase full of occamy shells and doesn’t sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Jacob tries to avoid anything to do with MACUSA, because last he knew they weren’t to be trusted - and he doesn’t know if he’s a target or not, either. No-majs aren’t supposed to be involved, he knows that much, and maybe Newt and the others have done something to protect him and that’s why they’re all staying away and pretending not to know him? But he still wants to help. And he knows about magic now, so he keeps seeing it everywhere - like the billywig, remember the billywig? That’s still flying around. And Modesty, this little girl who was too frightened to leave her tiny little safety-hole and so never got hit by the obliviate-rain. She knows magic exists and she’s scared, and Jacob runs across her and there’s nowhere else for her to go so of course he takes her in. He can’t just  _leave_  her, can he?

And Modesty is quiet, and nervous, and she doesn’t know what to think about magic. No, she does know. She knows it’s wrong. She knows it’s evil. At the same time, though, she’s a little girl who stood beside a hateful mother and saw the other little girls run by laughing in their pretty dresses with their pretty curls, and Modesty wanted that. Mother thought vanity was a sin, and gluttony, and witchcraft most of all, but to Modesty it seemed more like Mother thought that being happy was a sin.

Jacob doesn’t. Jacob goes to his uncles and comes back with dresses that his cousins have outgrown, and they’re pastel blue with white checks or pretty green with flowers stitched along the hems. Jacob brings a hairbrush and a comb and sits behind her with fierce determination, and he’s so worried about hurting her that he can barely pull the comb through the tangles at all. He lets her leave it loose, falling down to sit in wispy strands against the side of her face, and he calls her pretty. Jacob makes cakes and lets her help him ice them - just sugar and water, he lost the job at the cannery and the new one doesn’t pay well enough for the rich butter-icing he wants to make, but it’s sweet and it’s sticky and it’s more than Modesty has ever had.

And Jacob has a pet, this little bright blue whizzing thing that flies in excited circles around his head and makes Modesty float when it stings her. She finds it first in the kitchen, and she sneaks it crumbs from dinner. She doesn’t know what it is but it’s clearly magic and it’s clearly pretty and she loves it, a guilty, nervous sort of love that her Mother tried so hard to take away from her. When Jacob walks in she’s so scared - terrified, she’s terrified, and she tries to hide the magic-creature but it flies up to the ceiling and hovers there in plain sight, and she’s so convinced that Jacob’s going to send her away her throat closes up there’s tears in her eyes she can’t breathe from the panic of it because she doesn’t want to go -

And Jacob pulls her into a hug. He drops to his knees and hugs her, holds her too-thin frame against his chest and strokes her hair while she cries, lets her clutch onto his shirt and get his shoulder wet and snotty from her tears. He tells her, piece by halting piece that cover only the half the story but they’re all the pieces he has, of Newt and his creatures and the wonder of the world hidden around them.

Modesty is silent for most of it. She watches the billywig with wide eyes all through a dinner she barely touches (Jacob calls it Ben, he doesn’t know what species it is but he’s decided it’s called Ben) and, when Jacob is tucking her into bed and trying to disguise his worry by making the quilt sit extra smooth and the pillow extra fluffy, Modesty tells him about her brother.

Her brother who tried to protect her. Her brother who slipped her sweets, sometimes, that he said he got from a guy he knew - little round hard sweets that tasted like nothing she knew and turned her tongue all the colours of the rainbow. Her brother who claimed her silly toy stick was his because he didn’t want her to get hurt. Her brother who turned into a monster and brought the house down around her, but who kept her safe and made sure she didn’t get so much as a bruise from the debris.

And remember, remember that Jacob’s only kept the good memories of magic. That’s all the swooping evil venom will allow him to have. He remembers magic as something golden and warm, mooncalves and nifflers and the adrenalin rush of bringing the erumpet home safe. Jacob remembers magic as a thing that bakes strudels in mid air, keeps a kingdom of light and wonder hidden in a suitcase, a sweet-sticky shot in an underground speakeasy that makes you giggle out loud when you drink it.

He listens as Modesty tells him about the destruction, the damage, the roiling cloud of angry black smoke. As she stumbles her way through suspicions that her brother had done it before, maybe even  _killed_  someone before, Jacob keeps his face carefully clear of the conflict in his mind.

The idea that magic, wonderful, perfect magic could be used to do these things? It doesn’t fit. It  _can’t_  fit.

Except. Except.

He kisses Modesty on the forehead and wishes her sweet dreams, and Ben the billywig settles on her bedpost to watch over her sleep. He flicks off the light and waits a minute to hear her saying good night to Ben, waits for the sound of her settling in, then takes himself to the kitchen and retrieves the bottle of brandy from its hiding place under the sink.

The brandy is emptier than he remembers. Much emptier. As if all those times, those moments in the murky depths of his life where he’d had to pull the brandy out and drink from it - as if they’d all been wiped clean.

He clutches it like a safety blanket and doesn’t drink a drop.

“Magic is good,” he tries, keeping his voice hushed and whisper-soft. The words sit right with his memories but feel wrong in the cramped kitchen.

“Magic is dangerous,” he tries next, and yes he can see that - nundus, giant occamies larger than they ought to be and easily startled, brothers who bring down houses when someone threatens their little sister. But at the same time, winter coats that dissolve into flapper dresses, pellets that float when he throws them from the bucket, the crooning song of the marmite in Newt’s cradled arms.

“Magic is.” Magic is. If Modesty is right, then her brother - Credence - is a murderer, maybe more than once. Jacob can’t just overlook that. But things aren’t black and white; Newt’s nundu is marked as kill on sight, and the erumpet could easily have shattered Jacob’s skull, padded helmet or no.

When Jacob slides the brandy back into its hiding place, this is what he remembers from long lessons spent learning hebrew words and patient explanations at his babcia’s knee: only God can truly judge a person.

Good, dangerous, evil - whatever magic  _is,_  people are still people. Jacob doesn’t judge people. He feeds them, he hugs them if they need hugging, he brings them flower-patterned dresses that his cousins have outgrown and spends forty minutes trying desperately to put Modesty’s hair in the pretty braids she’s decided she likes, but he doesn’t judge them.

So he pushes himself back up, ignoring how stiff he knees have got from how long he’s been crouched with the brandy in his hand. When he’s standing, he darts a gaze out the window to where the shadows gather behind the streetlamps, and he says, “She misses you.” He doesn’t know if anyone’s listening. If they are, the shadows give no sign, and the silence stretches on uncomfortably long. “I won’t mind,” he says finally, “if you want to visit her. She’d like it. I won’t stop you.”

The shadows say nothing back, but that’s fine. Jacob can be patient. He nods, leaves the cupboard under the sink with its hidden brandy, and turns his thoughts instead to Modesty’s other sibling. What did Modesty say her name was? Charity? Chastity? Either way, she was family, she shouldn’t be left behind.


End file.
